One Month, Two Climate Extremes: A Reporter's Journey

What does it feel like to witness extreme drought and catastrophic flooding within a single month? Al Jazeera correspondent Haru Mutasa recently experienced this climate whiplash across Africa, traveling from Kenya's bone-dry borderlands to Mozambique's submerged cities. Her journey offers a stark glimpse into our climate-changed world.

Graveyards for the Living

The signs appeared immediately as Mutasa drove into Kenya's remote Mandera County. Dry riverbeds stretched endlessly. Camels stood skeletal against the horizon. Then came the communal graveyards—not for people, but for livestock burned and dumped in mass graves.

Local chief Adan Molu Kike, a quiet elderly man, explained the devastation with understated precision: "Our animals started dying in July last year, and they are still dying." When he learned Mutasa was from Zimbabwe, he asked a haunting question: "Have you seen a drought this bad in your country?"

Water arrives by truck once or twice weekly—if communities are lucky. The brown liquid must be shared between humans and surviving animals. Miss a delivery, and there's no water until the next scheduled drop. Pastoralist Mohamed Hussein dragged containers from the water bowser, exhaustion etched in his movements. His 100 animals had dwindled to 20. Three goats died the night before our conversation.

He casually tossed a dead goat into nearby bushes. In this desert survival game, there's no time for mourning. The living animals—and the families they sustain—take priority.

From Dust to Deluge

Journalists file their stories and fly home, but some experiences linger. Mutasa thought her climate reporting was finished for months. She was wrong.

Returning to Zimbabwe, she noticed heavy rains and flash floods in Harare. Within days, news broke of devastating floods across South Africa and Mozambique. Soon, she was boarding another plane—this time toward water instead of dust.

In Maputo's flooded neighborhoods, she waded through dirty, foul-smelling water between submerged homes. The scale shocked her, but nothing prepared her for what lay ahead. In Marracuene, highway toll gates sat completely underwater, road signs poking above the surface like maritime markers. The major highway had become a lake several meters deep.

In Xai Xai, Gaza province's capital, agricultural lands stretched like inland seas. Downtown restaurants and shops sat in murky water. Boat captain Richard Sequeira, navigating the devastation, painted a grim timeline: "The water must go down first, then we start cleaning. There are snakes and animals everywhere. Maybe 45 days to two months before we're out of our houses."

The Waters Keep Rising

The flooding isn't over. South Africa's Mpumalanga province has ordered immediate evacuations as dams reach capacity and prepare to release water. Mozambique lies downstream—meaning all that water will flow toward already-flooded communities.

This isn't just weather; it's the new normal. Climate change doesn't arrive gradually—it whiplashes between extremes, sometimes within the same reporter's assignment.

When Normal Becomes Extreme

Mutasa's month reveals something profound about our changing world. The same continent simultaneously hosts communities where three goats die nightly from drought while others measure floodwaters in meters rather than inches. The distance between these extremes—geographic and temporal—is shrinking.

International media coverage remains sporadic for both crises. When disasters become routine, they lose their news value. But for the communities living through them, each represents an existential challenge that could last months or years.

The boat captain's timeline—45 days to two months of displacement—assumes no additional flooding. The drought chief's animals have been dying for eight months with no end in sight. These aren't temporary emergencies; they're permanent adaptations to a destabilized climate.